Bernie Banton

Updated | After more than 10 years of public outrage, a special commission of inquiry and costly legal proceedings over a misleading press release and an asbestos fund that was $1.3 billion short, the door has finally closed on a dark chapter of James Hardie’s history.

Lost in the controversy about “the punch” in David Marr’s Quarterly Essay on Tony Abbott was a more significant insight into the Opposition Leader’s character. He is a man of chronic hyperbole, an attention seeker who cannot engage in public debate without exaggerating the faults of his opponents and their policy positions.

It wasn’t so much Tony Abbott’s “shit happens’’ remark about the circumstances of Australian soldier Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney’s death, but the Opposition Leader’s reaction to the Channel Seven journalist asking the questions that has put him at the centre of a political storm.